Currently moving one of our businesses to a new location and the topic surfaced whether or not we want to keep the emergency analog phone line around or ditch it..

So I ask: Do companies still use an analog line emergency purposes? I heard the company setup this analog line when they moved to Comcast fiber years back and the PRI was delivered over fiber and then converted to Copper for our Shortel system. Our new building delivers PRI over copper. Do any of you still see this method used? Do I even need a dedicated emergency line? I mean we all have cellphones. I'm looking to find any and all evidence for proving we don't need this Especially considering we don't have anything like an Elevator with an emergency phone in it, this thing just sits on a desk.

Only for alarm lines not for phone use. Now a days, the phones go out and people jump on their cellphones.. Unless expecting San Andreas movie style event, I don't see anyone using it. What about it's current use? Does anyone in the company ever need to use it now?

EDIT: We use to recommend this to all of our clients but with single line plans costing almost $100 a month anywhere we look, the client is no longer interested. I would still think it's a good idea but justifying to a client who always tries to pinch pennies wherever they can and have never been in an emergency to need one, never wants one

We had emergency phones located throughout both warehouses and production floors that were POTS. Depending on the issue, your cell tower may be down as well. A good old POTS line is just that extra insurance. We also had POTS lines for the network provider to dial in to the routers, yes, it was a 56K modem.

If you can get the Boss to agree with having it is better than not in the event of an emergency, I would do it. As IT_Bags said it is always good to have that extra little insurance then not in an emergency.

You could get 1 or 2 pots lines and actually bring them into your ShoreTel system as a backup if the PRI goes down. Of course if your power goes out well then you have no ShoreTel either. That's when you get fancy and bridge your 66 block to the other side that then connects to a good old fashioned rj11 jack and you plug in a bat phone.

As others have said there is little practical use for this anymore with nearly everyone having a cell phone but regulations require it in some areas. I've seen fire departments demand an analog line for the fire alarm system for example but they allowed for a wireless connection as well.

We have Copper PRIs for our phone system... copper POTS for alarm, and elevator.

Phone service has as much downtime as our fiber internet. Not sure it's better, or safer, or more reliable.

I'll state that our cellular service also has as much downtime as both... we've had our share of Nor Easters this past year, and 2 hurricanes teach us, that National Emergencies, all bets are off... what you need are MORE ways to do things, not necessarily OLD ways of doing things.

Having multiple backup options is a thing... but sometimes even all of those can be exhausted. Then its just stuff happens.

Not in our case. We switched to fiber and voip phones while retaining a few POT lines, but quickly noticed that for our area the POT lines had far more issues than our voip phones due to degraded copper lines. The POTs quit working at least once a month. At that point we decided to eliminate them as they were more trouble than they were worth and are under the assumption that in an emergency it’s more likely that the POTs will go down before our internet due to the insfratructure in our area.

We have a backup Iridium phone. That said, we're in the ass end of nowhere. Our primary phone service comes in via Satellite, and there is no cellular coverage. The Iridium connects into our CME system via an FXO port, and if everything goes to poop, it can be connected to a car battery and a POTS phone to dial out.

It costs us about $600/year to keep the system online, which is pretty cheap insurance.